The Seattle Seahawks sit at No. 1 on the DVOA table after three weeks of the 2025 NFL season, with the help of some excellent special teams play. Indianapolis is a surprise second, and Washington moves up from 14th to third with a big win over Las Vegas. There was a lot of significant movement in DVOA this week because of some big blowouts and some surprising results.
Before we move on to go through the numbers, please remember that opponent adjustments are still not included in these numbers. Each year, we introduce opponent adjustments after Week 4, so that’s next week. Also, this week’s DVOA commentary is coming to you a day early because of Tuesday’s Jewish holiday, so numbers for Baltimore and Detroit do not include Monday Night Football.
We had three games this week with a DVOA above 90%. Seattle’s 44-13 win over New Orleans moves them into first place. Washington’s 41-24 win over Las Vegas moves them into third place. And Minnesota’s 48-10 victory over Cincinnati moves the Vikings from 26th to 12th while the Bengals drop from 16th to 27th.
Seattle’s victory was powered by special teams, including a blocked punt and Tory Horton‘s 95-yard punt return touchdown. Dareke Young also had a 60-yard kickoff return. New Orleans blocked a Seattle field goal, but that was nullified by a penalty. Seattle has had positive special teams in all three games this year, while New Orleans has been negative in all three games. And so Seattle has the seventh-highest special teams DVOA ever after Week 3 at 19.0%, while New Orleans has the ninth-lowest special teams DVOA ever after Week 3 at -20.1%.
INDIANAPOLIS, IN – NOVEMBER 08: Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman (11) battles with Baltimore Ravens strong safety Chuck Clark (36) to catch the football in action during a NFL game between the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens on November 08, 2020 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, IN. (Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire)
Indianapolis is still a huge surprise in second place. The Colts moved into the No. 1 spot on offense this week as the Packers dropped all the way down to 15th due to their 13-10 loss to Cleveland. (The Packers are still No. 1 on defense, though.) What’s so surprising about the Colts is that they weren’t expected to do anything like this in 2025. Honestly, the same can be said for Seattle. Last year, the Seahawks ranked 18th in DVOA and the Colts ranked 19th, although there was a gap between them of nearly 10 percentage points.
Before this year, 21 different teams since 1978 had put up DVOA of 40% or higher through the first three games of the season after a year where they ranked 16th or lower in DVOA. Twelve of these 21 teams went on to make the playoffs, including the Super Bowl champion 1999 Rams and the Super Bowl-losing 2006 Bears. Two other teams had winning records but did not make the playoffs, including last year’s Seahawks (who had been 16th in 2023). Two teams were 8-8 and the other five teams had losing records, most notably the 2001 Chargers who started 3-0 with 62.3% DVOA and ended the season 5-11 and 13th in DVOA after losing the final nine games of the season.
I wanted to write that the Seahawks depend on special teams more than the rest of these historic 3-0 starters, but the 1996 Panthers had a ridiculous 25.0% special teams DVOA when they were 3-0! That’s the highest special teams rating ever after three games.
The rest of this week’s DVOA table makes a bit more sense, with teams that were mostly expected to do well this year. Our projections had the Chargers down this year, but they were a playoff team last year. Baltimore is fourth, pending Monday Night Football. The Rams are fifth and the Packers drop from the top of the table to sixth after their loss to Cleveland. The Chargers are seventh, the Bills are eighth, the Lions are ninth — again, before Monday night — and the 49ers are 10th.
The biggest surprise might be the 3-0 defending champion Philadelphia Eagles way down at No. 17 in DVOA so far. They dropped five spots from No. 12 after beating the Rams with two blocked field goals. They had a -30.2% DVOA for the win because blocked field goals don’t count in special teams DVOA. Blocked field goals are what I call a “non-predictive event.” It’s wrong to call them lucky, because they take skill and planning, but blocked field goals don’t usually indicate that you’re going to block more field goals later in the season. This, of course, sounds ridiculous because the Eagles blocked field goal was followed by another blocked field goal only a few minutes later! But it’s based on lots of teams and lots of blocks rather than just what the Eagles did yesterday. Anyway, the Eagles have played the Chiefs and Rams, who are two good teams. At least, we think they are good teams. Nobody’s quite sure about the Chiefs. We’ll see how this impacts the Eagles’ DVOA when we start putting in opponent adjustments a week from now.
A couple more big movers to note before I run the table. The Chicago Bears had a 31-14 victory over Dallas and move from last place to 20th this week. The Carolina Panthers move from 31st to 21st after beating the Falcons 30-0. Meanwhile, the Bengals aren’t the only big droppers. The Cardinals are down eight spots to No. 15, the Falcons down nine spots to No. 19, and the Raiders down 10 spots to No. 30.
* * * * *
These are the FTN DVOA and DAVE ratings through three weeks of 2025. Our Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) system breaks down every single play and compares a team’s performance to the league average based on situation in order to determine value over average. (Explained further here.) Please note that there are no opponent adjustments in DVOA until after Week 4.
OFFENSE and DEFENSE DVOA are adjusted for performance indoors and consider all fumbles, kept or lost, as equal value. SPECIAL TEAMS DVOA is adjusted for type of stadium (warm, cold, dome, Denver) and week of season. As always, positive numbers represent more points so DEFENSE is better when it is NEGATIVE.
DAVE is a formula which combines our preseason forecast with current DVOA to get a more accurate projection of how a team will play the rest of the season. DAVE is currently 65% preseason forecast for offense and 90% preseason forecast for defense and special teams. Cincinnati’s DAVE is adjusted so the forecast reflects Jake Browning as quarterback instead of Joe Burrow. (DAVE does not yet include an adjustment for Nick Bosa‘s season-ending injury, which was announced after I ran the numbers for this week.)
*Monday Night Football is not included for the Ravens and Lions.
RK
TEAM
TOTAL
DVOA
LAST
WEEK
TOTAL
DAVE
RK
W-L
OFF.
DVOA
OFF.
RK
DEF.
DVOA
DEF.
RK
S.T.
DVOA
S.T.
RK
1
SEA
48.7%
6
5.7%
10
2-1
13.3%
6
-16.4%
5
19.0%
1
2
IND
44.7%
5
1.9%
15
3-0
33.1%
1
-13.7%
8
-2.1%
21
3
WAS
37.4%
14
15.7%
4
2-1
13.2%
7
-12.2%
10
11.9%
2
4
BAL*
35.6%
4
25.8%
1
1-1
24.2%
3
-1.9%
17
9.4%
4
5
LAR
35.0%
2
12.5%
7
2-1
20.3%
4
-10.4%
12
4.2%
9
6
GB
25.5%
1
10.0%
9
2-1
1.5%
15
-30.6%
1
-6.6%
26
7
LAC
23.0%
3
4.8%
12
3-0
11.3%
9
-14.4%
7
-2.8%
22
8
BUF
22.3%
11
23.3%
2
3-0
30.2%
2
4.3%
19
-3.7%
23
9
DET*
20.9%
9
19.0%
3
1-1
20.0%
5
-5.2%
15
-4.3%
24
10
SF
19.4%
13
13.4%
6
3-0
12.3%
8
-15.6%
6
-8.5%
28
11
JAX
18.5%
8
2.4%
14
2-1
2.8%
14
-16.5%
4
-0.8%
20
12
MIN
16.9%
26
0.3%
17
2-1
-13.4%
25
-22.1%
2
8.2%
6
13
KC
9.8%
18
14.5%
5
1-2
9.0%
11
-0.3%
18
0.5%
15
14
DEN
9.2%
15
5.5%
11
1-2
-0.3%
18
-7.1%
14
2.4%
13
15
ARI
4.4%
7
1.3%
16
2-1
-4.3%
19
-9.4%
13
-0.7%
19
16
TB
3.7%
19
3.7%
13
3-0
6.3%
13
-10.7%
11
-13.3%
31
RK
TEAM
TOTAL
DVOA
LAST
WEEK
TOTAL
DAVE
RK
W-L
OFF.
DVOA
OFF.
RK
DEF.
DVOA
DEF.
RK
S.T.
DVOA
S.T.
RK
17
PHI
1.1%
12
12.3%
8
3-0
7.7%
12
6.7%
22
0.1%
17
18
CLE
-7.3%
24
-13.4%
27
1-2
-18.9%
29
-17.1%
3
-5.5%
25
19
ATL
-8.4%
10
-8.4%
23
1-2
-12.5%
24
-13.7%
9
-9.6%
29
20
CHI
-10.8%
32
-0.4%
18
1-2
1.3%
16
12.2%
25
0.1%
16
21
CAR
-11.5%
31
-23.1%
31
1-2
-20.7%
30
-4.6%
16
4.6%
7
22
PIT
-13.3%
25
-5.0%
20
2-1
-5.4%
20
11.2%
24
3.3%
12
23
DAL
-19.0%
17
-3.2%
19
1-2
9.1%
10
31.9%
32
3.8%
10
24
NYJ
-21.4%
21
-16.1%
29
0-3
-15.2%
26
14.5%
26
8.3%
5
25
HOU
-21.6%
22
-5.6%
21
0-3
-17.9%
28
5.4%
20
1.6%
14
26
NE
-26.0%
29
-7.7%
22
1-2
0.8%
17
19.6%
28
-7.2%
27
27
CIN
-30.2%
16
-13.6%
28
2-1
-24.0%
31
6.1%
21
0.0%
18
28
MIA
-31.5%
27
-8.9%
24
0-3
-5.4%
20
30.6%
31
4.5%
8
29
NYG
-31.9%
28
-12.2%
26
0-3
-10.3%
22
25.2%
30
3.6%
11
30
LV
-37.9%
20
-9.4%
25
1-2
-16.4%
27
11.0%
23
-10.6%
30
31
NO
-47.2%
23
-17.8%
30
0-3
-11.4%
23
15.7%
27
-20.1%
32
32
TEN
-47.8%
30
-26.0%
32
0-3
-32.5%
32
24.8%
29
9.5%
3